Green tips for your Thanksgiving table decor

Nov. 21, 2013

Joanne Palmisano of Shelburne, a stylist and blogger for DIY Network, decorated a holiday table with items collected from resale shops and recycling centers, including a bed coverlet, glassware and silver settings from a church bazaar. / EMILY McMANAMY/FREE PRESS

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Free Press correspondent

Joanne Palmisano of Shelburne, a stylist and blogger for DIY Network, decorated a holiday table with items collected from resale shops and recycling centers, including a bed coverlet, glassware and silver settings from a church bazaar. / EMILY McMANAMY/FREE PRESS

Secondhand sources:

In addition to smaller area thrift stores at churches and synagogues, our expert sources recommend the South Burlington and Williston Goodwill and the ReSOURCE Household Goods Store on Pine Street in Burlington.

A table arrangement for Thanksgiving by StrayCat Flower Farm includes oak leaves, rose hips, ferns, sumac and grasses gathered from the woods as well as kitchen herbs such as parsley, rosemary and sage and tea lights set in wild apples. / Photo by Melissa Pasanen

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Thanksgiving may be primarily about gathering family and friends with good food around your table, but making that table look festive and special is a nice touch, too.

The challenge is that most of us have not inherited enough china, silver and crystal to serve a multi-course meal to a dozen or more guests and, for both financial and other reasons, we don’t want to buy a lot of expensive new stuff for just a couple days a year.

So we went to some local experts for suggestions on how to set a beautiful holiday table without breaking the bank and with an eye to creative re-use.

Moe O’Hara is owner of recycle moe, a Burlington-based business producing usable recycled art sold through her stand at the Burlington summer farmers market and seasonal craft fairs.

Diana Doll and Jayson Munn co-own StrayCat Flower Farm in Burlington’s Intervale where they farm cut flowers and gather flowers and plants for their floral designs.

Start with a white canvas. For both practical and aesthetic reasons, Joanne Palmisano always uses a white tablecloth, white napkins and her white everyday plates for special occasions and then layers on color and other festive touches. White linens are common and can be found cheap, even new, and spills, particularly of hard-to-remove cranberry sauce or red wine, can be bleached out.

Everything need not match. Not every place setting must be identical. There is charm in eclectic, inexpensive finds gathered from church bazaars and thrift stores. Moe O’Hara has fed a Thanksgiving crowd on mixed $1 a piece plates with a color scheme of green and blue; try orange, yellow, gold and browns for Thanksgiving. Secondhand glassware is abundant and cheap; often you’ll find several in each pattern. Use other consistent elements like napkin rings (see below) or one type of flower in a variety of thrift store vases to unify the table.

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Let the natural patina (and story) shine. A favorite find of Joanne Palmisano’s is a 12-place setting of silver-plate cutlery she found at a church bazaar. Each piece is engraved with FBC for First Baptist Church. Although she sometimes polishes it, it’s just as beautiful with a slightly tarnished patina. It reminded me of an old silver-plate tray of my grandmother’s that I never use because it seems like too much trouble to polish, but I’m going to pull it out this year and use it as is.

Alternate uses for everyday objects. One of the special-occasion tablecloths Palmisano often uses is actually a bedspread she found for $6.99 at the local Goodwill. “Bedspreads often have better texture than tablecloths,” she says. (Just make sure the texture doesn’t destabilize your stemware.) O’Hara likes to make napkin rings out of new or used shower curtain rings (run them through the dishwasher) wrapped in coordinated scraps of fabric, ribbon or paper and then glued or brushed with an all-in-one glue/sealer/finish such as Mod Podge. (The same fabric or paper can then be applied to the outside of big candles, creating a nice theme.)

Decorate with food (you can later eat). Fill thrift store glass bowls or wide vases with fresh cranberries or dried beans and then set candles in them, as Palmisano does. Diana Doll and Jayson Munn suggest a parade of fragrant, fresh herb bouquets in small mason jars down the center of the table. Line each jar with autumn leaves and make bows with natural twine.

Go for a walk in the woods. Doll and Munn list off any number of foliage options easily found in local woods for (responsible and moderate) clipping for your holiday arrangements. They say five “ingredients” make a good base for flower arrangement “recipes,” perhaps small branches of bronze oak leaves and golden, almond-shaped beech leaves with a hit of color from bright red Ilex, also known as winterberry, or the velvety maroon cones of sumac. Add more texture and color with horsetail, a segmented reed that looks a little like bamboo, sprigs of rosehips, dried or fresh ferns and even grasses gone to seed. Fill the base of glass vases or jars with bright green moss, pieces of white birch bark (from downed branches), or fall leaves. (Note: if you expect very young guests, take care to keep brightly colored, potentially inedible berries out of their reach.)

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Think “tablescapes” rather than tall arrangements. For easier communication across the table, keep décor at a low height, recommends Munn, perhaps laying branches or other plant material down the center of a rectangular table along a long, narrow runner of something neutral and natural such as muslin, striped cotton ticking, burlap, even butcher paper or recycled cut brown paper bags. For a classic, simple look, Doll suggests a couple long snaky gourds with candles of different heights set at several spots along the curved gourd necks. She and Munn sometimes set tea lights into holes carved into wild apples, small pumpkins or gourds.

Kids get crafty. Your youngest guests can help make holiday-themed potato prints along a butcher paper runner or stamp a frame for brown paper bag place mats. Palmisano inscribes holiday-themed inspirational notes on small squares of birch bark, which would also make nice place cards?another nice project for youngsters.

Put your pie on a pedestal. I followed O’Hara’s suggestion and found a trio of different pretty plates in thrift stores and used very strong glue to attach secondhand candle sticks (and a sturdy dessert goblet in one case) to create my own collection of different height dessert stands. “Your homemade pie should definitely be on a pedestal,” O’Hara says.